Early screenshots of The Con, made it difficult to figure out what the gameplay was like. It looked like a beat-em-up game in the vein of Beatdown or The Bouncer, but in fact, it's just a one on one fighting game. The game is played from an over the shoulder view that's more common to a boxing game than a game like Tekken or Def Jam. Although, like in Tekken, the four face buttons represent upper left/right and lower left/right attacks. The directional pad is used to bob and weave with your fighter, as well as alter your punches and kicks.

The mechanic is interesting in concept at least, although not terribly different than a game like Fight Night, but it fails horribly in execution. Controls are sluggish, and what combos are there feel unresponsive. For a game whose sole interactivity is built around a fighting engine, it surely is one of the worst I've played. It's uninteresting to say the least, and I don't say that just because there aren't any flashy moves. It's just plain punches, kicks, and the occasional throw without the depth of a simple boxing match, much less an advanced fighter Virtua Fighter.

The problem is, that's all there really is to the game, just tons and tons of those fights. There's a dash of story, a sprinkle of character development, and the "Con" system that at least attempts to help the game along. See, The Con is aptly named due to the fact that your fights can be thrown, or made to appear closer, to make more money. Before every fight, you place a wager down, and not necessarily on yourself. The betting window, per se, doesn't close until a set time into the fight. Up until that point the odds will change depending on the early outcome. If you bet on yourself, you might want to let the opponent get you down early in order to lower your odds of winning. Then your payoff will be higher when you win.

The fight still has to be believable to the fans, or else all bets are off. If you just stand there and take 10 hits on the chin without retaliating, the crowd is going to know there's a fix on. The game tries to help out in this regard and has actually built in fake punches and over exaggerated responses to being hit. Again, this sounds cool in theory, but when it comes down to it, it's feels gimmicky. All you'll want to do in the end is put loads of cash on yourself and try to win every fight.

The story is there as an excuse to fight middling opponents that lead up to bosses. There's nothing interesting going on, and that would've been ok had there been something to the fighting engine. In between fights you can also increase stats on your character through training. There aren't any training mini-games. You pick the areas you want to become better in at the expense of some stamina for the next fight. There's also a way to unlock and create combos, but again, there's no incentive since I dreaded having to fight again anyway.

The graphics are decent for the PSP. Everything, from the fighters to the environments, is pretty bland, but it's technically fine. The character creation has plenty of options, but I still found it hard to come up with anything that would make me say, "damn, that looks cool," when I was done. Outside of bosses, all the rest of the fighters seem to come randomly out of this character generator.

I want more games on the PSP that I haven't already played in some way, shape, or form on the PS2, but not at this expense. There's nothing in The Con to hold your interest. While the fixing of fights is original, there's no gameplay to back it up. Boredom sets in fast with this one.